Tui Allen

Tui Allen, Author of the B.R.A.G.Medallion Honoree Ripple, shares her experience in entering foreign markets- Why might you want to publish in a foreign language, considering the extra barriers it presents? First of course to increase the size of your market – that's obvious. But it's possible there may be foreign markets which are more receptive to your particular book than the English-language market is. New Zealander Mary Scott, wrote romances set on remote NZ farms, back in the mid-1900s. They did well at home in NZ, but sold even better in translation in Germany. Germany was a bigger market of course, but her authentic tales of a life so different from their own experience, fascinated her German readers. But she had her publishers to arrange it all. What if you are self-published as so many of us are today? I know another author who self-published an excellent novel in English. He wanted the book to reach the German market. The author himself had a fair grip on German, but it was not his native tongue, so he hired a friend, a native German speaker, to translate the book for him. The translation seemed okay as far as he…

New Zealand was the guest of Honour at the 2012 Frankfurt Book FairRipple by Tui Allen was chosen to represent New Zealand and we are proud to say is a2012 B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree Thank you Tui for taking the time to share your thoughts- My book Ripple was selected by the New Zealand Society of Authors (NZSA) as one of forty to represent NZ literature at Frankfurt. This happened because NZ was this year's Frankfurt "Country of Honour." It's a bit like being the host country at the Olympics, except that the fair is always in Frankfurt Germany.It is the biggest book fair in the world and is the size of a medium sized NZ town except taller. Being on many levels, it goes higher into the sky than towns do here. To get around its buildings you catch a bus!We NZSA authors became known in NZ as the "Frankfurt Forty" The list we were chosen from did not include authors who had already been chosen by the Publisher's Association of New Zealand (PANZ). The PANZ authors were all very well-known and had been thoroughly conventionally published and their Frankfurt costs were paid for them. Several of the NZSA list…